let's drive to the countryside, leave behind some green-eyed lookalike
by ghost-of-high-heart
Summary: "I wish we could just go. Just hop on a motorcycle and just leave Riverdale." "So why don't we?" Wherein, Jughead and Betty leave; and they don't look back. [Bughead s02e05 divergence.]


" _Love is a river_ , _I wanna keep flowing_.

 _Life is a road_ , _now and forever_ , _wonderful journey_.

 _I'll be there when the world stops turning_ ,

 _I'll be there when the storm is through_.

 _In the end_ , _I wanna be standing_ ,

 _At the beginning with you_."

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The bell chimed above Jughead merrily as he walked through the door into Pop's.

"Betty Cooper," Jughead drawled, tilting his head a little, "you are a sight for sore eyes."

She rounded on him, smiling beatifically, and Jughead felt like all air had been punched out of his lungs.

Betty was beaming up at him as she got out of her seat; blindingly bright, and affectionate, and oh so very sweetly. There was a dimple in her left cheek and the corners of her blue eyes crinkled some, long eyelashes curling at the ends like a seahorse's tail. When she pulled him into an unexpected, one-armed embrace, Jughead had felt her unduly strong fingers grip his back through both his jacket and threadbare shirt, and relaxed, at the familiarity of her touch.

Immediately, Jughead let his hands to settle on the dip of her waist, circling it; and his nose brushing against the soft skin stretched over the sharp jut of her collarbone. Betty smelled of crystallised honey-lemon sweets, fresh nectarines and sugarplums, and home.

He had missed her. _How he had missed her_.

Planting a kiss onto her cheek, Jughead's mouth instinctually twisted into a crooked half-smile, "Thanks for coming to meet me—"

The rest of the sentence was swallowed by her mouth as Betty cradled his face between her hands and pulled him into her.

 _I love you_ , she thought. _I love you_. _I love you_.

The kiss tasted of smoke from his cigarette and sugar that clung to her lips, and immediately, she can feel his hands anchoring on the small of her back, fingers catching the material of her sweater. His mouth was hungry and desperate, as he pulled her closer, body pressed flush against her, firm and hot and close. Betty was no longer sure who was kissing whom, but it was open-mouthed and all-consuming, and she let the kiss linger for longer than was seemly. She did not want ever to stop.

His breathing was ragged when he finally pulled back, nose brushing against her own, eyes wild. It always made her heart surge and swell with ardour, how Jughead looked at her like he didn't quite believe she was real.

(She was sure she mirrored the look right back.)

"I am so very glad you called," Betty whispered, softly, pulling away and tucking away her smile. Jughead felt the loss keenly, as if the sun had been snuffed out.

Still, she did not step away, but instead busied herself by brushing over the contours of his face, the bones of his skull, neck, and shoulders, with fluttering, gentle hands. Jughead was not quite sure if she meant to check for injuries or to reassure herself of his presence; either way, he was not begrudging the attention.

He felt her slim fingers circle his wrist and tug him towards the booth she'd been previously occupying.

"God, I've missed you," he said as he took his seat, giving voice to his thoughts, "I've just been feeling — I don't know… _unmoored_."

"Me, too."

"I just wanted to make sure you were still alive," Jughead quipped, half-joking, a smirk hiding away in the corner of his mouth.

A shadow fell across Betty's features and her voice hitched an octave when she asked, "What do you mean?"

For a moment Jughead can only stare at her, brow furrowed as he hones in on her face, trying to uncover whatever it was she had been hiding in her eyes. "That… exposé that you published about your mom, that article you wrote…"

"Oh, ummm… " Betty said, casting her gaze downward, fumbling for words, "that's a long story, but, yeah, pretty intense." Then, "What happened to your hand?"

 _The most convincing lies_ , books have taught Jughead Jones early on, _must carry a grain of truth_.

"Oh, I'm dog-sitting. Do you remember Hot Dog, that mutt?" he asked and Betty sighed softly, tension palpably easing out of her shoulders. "Don't worry. He's got his shots."

Betty bit her lip, fixing her stare on their entwined hands, and whatever brief spark of joy that had been blazing in her moments prior, had fizzled and dimmed into uncertainty.

Betty was gloriously lovely; she had a winsome smile, a charming demeanour, and, to him, was utterly ravishing, always. In part, because she was the only one he had ever found desirable, but mostly because before Betty, he had not known it was humanly possible to love and want one person interminably and in such overwhelming abundance.

But it would seem undisclosed sorrow had etched itself into her bones, giving her an air of haunting tragedy. She was all the more beautiful for it. But achingly sad, too; and Jughead loved her best, happy.

 _She's hiding something_ , he thought, worriedly, because Betty was incredibly easy to read when one looked at her the way Jughead did. _But then again_ , _so am I_.

 _Lies_ , _secrets_ , _truths omitted_ — _when had this become us?_

Still, the moment stretched and silence hung between them.

As it played, Jughead could not help but catch the lyrics of the song buzzing softly in the background: _When you lose_ , _when you rush_. _When you don't feel strong enough_. _Everybody needs a pick me up_ , _you can count on me_ —

The fingers of his fist flexed, involuntarily, tightening their grasp on Betty's small hand.

 _Come what may come what might_. _Everybody falls down sometimes_ —

" _Don't lose hope it'll be alright_ ," quietly sang-along Pop's from behind the counter as he wiped down the counter. " _You can count on me_."

It was very hard not to regard this moment as some ominous foreshadowing.

Life was not a story, Jughead reminded himself, not for the first time; it did not follow the rhythmic beats of a plotted narrative. Seemingly innocuous details were not designed presages for future events, they were merely arbitrary trivialities, instead.

 _Life_ _is_ _not_ _a_ _story_. _I_ _have_ _long_ _learned_ _that long ago_ , _to_ _my_ _sorrow_.

Still, he could already feel the claws of the narrative sinking into him, twisting and pulling and remoulding him.

"I wish—" Jughead stuttered, then, cut himself off, swallowing harshly, his words jerking Betty out of her thoughts with a chilling start. Jughead never wished for anything; it was a heartbreaking quality Betty both readily admired about him and pitied greatly.

When he spoke again, his eyes were growing glassy and far-away, "I wish we could just _go_. Just hop on a motorcycle and just leave Riverdale. Go someplace where there's no Northside, or Southside… or Serpents, Ghoulies—"

"No crazy moms," Betty sniffed, smiling a little, "no Black Hoods."

The way she looked at him now made fear and dread tighten in Jughead's belly. It made him want to scoop Betty up and tuck her into himself; to open up his own chest, expose blood, visceral, and bone, and hide his girlfriend away in nook close to the muscle of his heart, to shield her from everything and everyone.

"Like Romeo and Juliet," Betty whispered, soft as a petal's kiss, "but _we_ live happily ever after instead."

There was a tear rolling down the high curve of her cheekbone, burning a salty, downward path on Betty's flushed skin and… and there was _something_ haunting in her gaze, searchingly saturated in colour and sentiment — the greens and the blues spiralled, twisted, and gyrated; an ineffable, wildering emotion flowing, streaming from her into him.

It set a wild thumping in Jughead's chest, like his heart was scrambling to escape his ribcage and rush to her. _A river_ , he thought, _flowing through us_.

"So why don't we?"

"What?"

"Why don't we leave?" he repeated himself, staring at Betty intently. "We _can_. I do have my bike and some cash…"

"We _can't_ ," she stuttered, but she hadn't pulled back. "We're fifteen—"

"Sixteen," corrected Jughead, because of course he would.

" _You_ are sixteen and emancipated," Betty pressed. " _I_ am neither. My mother—I can't just—I have _no_ choice—!"

"Betty," softly interrupted Jughead, lacing his fingers through hers as he cupped her palm. "We _always_ have a choice."

"I…"

"External forces, facticities, personal histories, circumstances, and responsibilities — _whatever_ may be limiting our capabilities, but the bottom line is still this; — nothing can force you to follow a course. This is the tragic beauty of the human condition: we inherently posses the inescapable freedom of choice.

"To think otherwise is self-deceiving," he added, smiling a little, "it would be acting in bad faith."

"Oh, yeah," Betty asked, an eyebrow twitching upwards into an arch in spite of herself, "who taught you that?"

Jughead winked. "Sartre, actually."

She opened her mouth to say, _Of course_ , _you'd bring philosophy into this_ , but what tumbled out instead was:

"I'm in trouble."

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"The key," Jughead began once Betty concluded her stilted, emotionally-charged account of Black Hood's demands of her, "is to change the situation."

Upon being met with a blank look from her, Jughead continued, "As it is, the game—"

"This is _not_ a _game_!"

" _I_ know that," Jughead said, leveling his best _keep-it-together-sweetheart_ stare on her, "but does he?"

Jughead's tone was cool, having composed himself but moments prior in that deep, bone-chilling way only he could. It was as if he shut down off his emotions to the problem and stepped away from situation to examine it from a distance — his ability to control himself like that had always pissed Betty off because she could never do that, she always found that she cared too much about _everything_.

"No," she whispered, hunching her shoulders, "no, I don't think he does."

They were camped out in his trailer, on the recently steam-cleaned floor carpeting by the threadbare couch, Jughead's long legs stretched out in front of him as he scrolled through Betty's phone, marking down time stamps and length of call from Unknown Number in a spiralled notebook he set against his thigh. Betty was tucked into his side; she folded her legs against herself, a skinny arm wrapped around herself in a hug and tucking her chin into the valley between the rounded bones of her kneecaps.

Unwittingly, her left hand twitched — it was resting on Jughead's thigh. The warm weight of it beneath her palm was familiar; reassuring. If she closed her eyes, Betty could almost pretend they were engaged in another investigative session in the old _The Blue & Gold _offices, just like old times.

 _Almost_ , she thought, _but not quite_.

For one, there was a large, hairy sheepdog resting by her feet, sleeping soundly.

"What will happen to the dog?" she blurted, out of blue.

"Hot Dog?" Jughead asked, raising his eyebrows as he stole a glance at her profile. "I imagine Toni will take him in."

" _Toni_?"

"Or Sweet Pea, or Fangs, or any other deranged member of Baby Serpents Club."

Betty snorted, "Doesn't that include you?"

"Perhaps," Jughead conceded, smirking, "but we won't be here, now, will we?"

"Yeah," she agreed, softly, "we won't."

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"Well," Jughead said, sealing the sturdy, brown-paper envelope in front of him, "that's the last of it."

It had been filled with a notebook containing everything both she and Jughead recorded about Black Hood, her unlocked phone with the evidence, and a thumb drive housing a video on which Betty tearfully explained all the ways Black Hood had been terrorising her and what he threatened her with — enough documentation to verify that Betty, in fact, had not been kidnapped.

A necessary precaution against Alice Cooper and her absolute lack of chill.

Betty hummed in acknowledgement, but otherwise didn't reply. She was lying on the couch, either staring off into space or studying the trailer's ceiling, he was not quite sure, her hair untangled and flowing free until it brushed the floor — soft and golden, and gleaming in the waning afternoon light.

" _She's certainly very pretty_ , _isn't she?_ " Toni had said after she first met Betty. " _Like a doll_. _She smiles quite a lot_. "

"Betty," he called through sandpaper-dryness of his throat, "what's wrong?"

To Jughead Jones, his feelings for Betty were inimitable in their singularity. To him, what he and Betty shared was incompatible and unsurpassable; Betty, both as a friend and as lover, was matchless and unrivalled. Betty was _Betty_ — she was in a league of her own.

It sometimes slipped his mind that was not the case for most other humans. To them, Betty was the all the pretty things, big dreams, romantic ideals, girl-next-door with a happily-ever-after tale; blonde and perky, and seemingly perfect. They did not know her like he did, and liked her for all the things she appeared to be, rather than for what and who she was. Even earnest, good-natured Archie believed more in the illusion than the truth.

No wonder Black Hood was making her his Christine.

But the girl in front of his wasn't quite his Betty — it was like a shade of her had been drawn; wan and drained, and most broken he'd seen her in a while. She tried to blink the brightness from her eyes, but to no avail; he had already noticed — when Jughead looked at Betty, he saw _her_ , more clearly than he saw anything.

He glanced at her hands; mercifully, they were blood free. She'd been twisting the hem of one of his shirts that she put on the minute they entered the trailer, pulling at the fabric until Jughead was sure it'd been stretched permanently. Turning fully to face her, Jughead had eased onto his knees, hovering over her. He took her chin between thumb and forefinger, and although she had not stopped him, she closed her eyes, her mouth twitching.

"Nothing," she murmured, and caught his hand, pressing a quick kiss to his rough palm. Then, confronted with the feeling his furrowed brow scowling down on her, insisted a little more firmly, "nothing's wrong."

"Betty," he implored, soft and gentle, in a quiet tone he reserved solely for her. " _Please_."

She could be as delicate as spun glass, but Betty's sweet, gentle, and spirited nature belied how her mettle was as firm and unyielding as tempered steel. She, much like him, had a resilient core, on which he counted on to see when she opened her eyes.

Jughead was not disappointed.

"He won't like it — that we're leaving."

"So? He's welcome to convey his feelings to my face and I'll kick his ass."

A wretched sound crawled out of her throat: half frantic, high-pitched laugh, half-sob; utterly heart-wrenching. "I just want him to leave me alone."

"He will," he assured her, "once we're gone."

"But Polly—!"

"He wants you," Jughead said leaning forward, pressing his lips to her forehead. His fingers ran small, soothing circles against the side of her head, right behind the shell of her ear. "He wants _you_ , Betty. What use is Polly to him if you aren't here?"

"He might hurt her," came Betty's broken whisper.

"He _won't_. If she was a target, he would have hurt her already."

Her face was warm beneath her lips, and as Jughead touched her cheek, trailed the back of his fingers along her jaw, she leaned into him, drawing even closer. She breathed deep and steady, keeping anxiety at bay, the sound of her filling the trailer's tight space.

A slow, but unmistakable shiver crept up his spine like a snake coiling around his heart. Ever since she'd told him what has been happening to her, he felt the hot, sizzling sting bubble in him — it had always secreted itself inside of him, that red rush of absolute murder that sung in him ever so often, setting his blood ablaze. Now, it refused to leave him, wreathing inside and setting his ordinarily focused mind into a storm, connecting the events of the past and splintering the future. A dull throb began to beat inside his head, matching rhythm with his pounding heart.

Jughead had never been anything close to tame by any stretch of the truth, but in comparison to other boys at Southside High, he came off as mild-mannered. There was, however, a chasmic disparity between appearance and reality. And Jughead was thoroughly F.P. Jones's son, no matter how desperately he tried to refute and reject it.

 _When it gets down to the bone_ , he thought, thumb running across Betty's knuckles, pressing his lips to the sharp ridge of her cheekbone, _all real snakes are the same_.

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"The Joneses are fucked by the fickle finger of fate," snorted Jughead, twisting the key in the trailer's lock with a sense of finality, of bringing something weighty to its interminable end, "many a time and throughout the generations.

"But there's one thing we do best," he paused then, considering, "well, three things, actually, so this will have to count as fourth — we do know how to make an exit."

"So this is us," Jughead said, bright eyes locking with Betty's, both thrilling and frightening in their intensity. It felt like a start of something. "Making an exit."

The plan was that they did not, in fact, have a plan.

Uncharacteristic of both of them, given that they were Jughead Jones and Betty Cooper, calculation and organisation personified, respectively, but having no contingency plans was liberating in its impulsivity.

A novel feeling to both of them, in truth.

They decided against taking the truck, by in large because while Jughead had acquired the appropriate documentation and licences for the motorcycle, he was yet to do so for his dad's beat-up Ford — but also, because the bike was notably faster. Jughead had scavenged up an old Steib sidecar his dad has used for him and Jellybean when they were little, and by unanimous vote, they had decided to use it to house their personal belongings and supplies, while Betty rode on the back with him.

Now, Jughead was leaning against his bike, arms folded at his chest, straining the denim with the breadth of his shoulders, and waiting for Betty to emerge from the lightless depths of her house with a packed bag.

When Betty finally bounded down the front steps on coltish legs, she was dressed similarly to him; dark jumper, dark jeans, sturdy boots, and a fur-lined jacket. Without preamble, she threw an old carpet bag into the sidecar, landing it on top of Jughead's hiking rucksack.

She turned sharply to greet him and was startled by finding that a single, white flower filled her vision with its loveliness. Betty blinked, confused. "Who's that for?"

"You," said Jughead, and tucked the gardenia bloom behind the shell of her ear.

Swooning a little over the gesture, she drawled, smilingly. " _Smooth_."

He gave a one-shouldered shrug, but a corner of his mouth quirked up, almost shyly. "I try."

Back in the trailer, only hours ago, Jughead had told Betty: "The key is to change the situation."

What that meant was this: "We take you out of equation, Betty. We take away his pawn, we change the rules of the game — then, it's no longer _his_ game. It's _ours_. We dictate the rules. He's doing it for you. What if there's no you to do it for?"

(That was the thing about Jughead Jones, Betty remembered then, he always saw startlingly clearly through everyone. Even if he did not see himself clearly at all.)

"Last chance to back out," Jughead murmured, drawing Betty near in spite of his words, his legs bracketing her hips. "You sure about this?"

"I don't know," she whispered softly, then, her eyes widened and she scrambled to clarify, "I just mean… I'm not so sure about everything, any more."

Jughead locked his gaze on her, keeping silent. Surprisingly, Betty was neither distressed nor discomfited by the intensity of a stare that even had her mother balking. With Jughead, there was no pretence. He knew who she was, what she was, what she could do, and what she would do — he knew _her_.

Such a degree of familiarity and intimacy between them was liberating in and of itself.

Finally, he said, voice rougher than she anticipated, "I'm sure about _us_."

Betty smiled at him, her eyes glittering; thick lashes curled in twin half-moons so thick they left shadows on her cheekbones. "I'm sure about us, too. It's the _only_ thing I'm sure of."

Jughead's smile was much the same as when they were kids — slow and heady and honeylike, and just as sweet. It filled her with joy; rushed through like a flood, eddies swirling, and flowing to every corner of her being.

 _I love him_ , she thought, heart swelling. _I love_ ** _him_**.

Months ago, she had told her mother Jughead was her family. That was no longer strictly true — he was more than family to Betty, he was a part of her. He had burrowed himself into her, crawled into her heart; he flowed through her veins and lived in the marrow of her bones, cut through her teeth, dusted on her skin, and woven through her hair. Jughead was under her nails and caught in the back of her throat. There was no escaping how she felt for him.

When they kissed again, his mouth was soft and hot, and he tasted tart and electric, like aged brandy. His lips were softer than they were that morning, gentler, too, and he impatiently tugged off his glove before cupping the side of her face, dipping down to kiss her again, feathering soft kisses until her mouth opened under his, warm and pliant.

Theirs was an insolvable, unabating love.

 _Whatever our souls are made of_ , Betty reflected, _his and mine are the same_.

That had to be enough.

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Six hours before sunrise, a motorcycle engine flared to life. It roared, a dragon breathing smoke and brimstone as it sped past the sign reading _Welcome To Riverdale_ : _The Town With Pep!_.

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 _fin_.

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End file.
